German minister of justice visits children's home
October 15, 2006 ·
The German Federal Minister of Justice who compared US President George Bush’s rhetoric toward Iraq to a tactic Hitler used is here in the country to attend a human rights conference and meet the children at the Preda Children’s Center in Olongapo City on October 9 to 12.
In 2002, Prof. Herta Däubler-Gmelin suggested in an interview that U.S. President George W. Bush wanted the war with Iraq to distract attention from economic problems in the United States. She said these methods had been used several times since the time of Adolf Hitler.
Global estimates put the number of people displaced by war at 57.4 million people. More than half of these are children.
Prof. Herta Däubler-Gmelin is an advocate and known defender of human rights and is active in campaigning against sex tourism and the sexual exploitation of children. She is in the keynote speaker in the 7th International Human Rights Conference organized by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a German NGO working for international cooperation in the field of human rights and other social issues. Fr. Shay Cullen and other human rights workers in the region will also be present in the conference.
At Preda, she visited the alternative homes for girls and children in conflict the law and spent time with the children and listened to their stories. These children, some as young as eight, have been rescued from abusive homes and prison conditions. Some of the girls have been trafficked from the provinces to the cities where they are abused and enslaved in the sex bars and resorts to gratify the carnal appetites of the rich sex tourists.
Street children, mostly boys are frequently arrested and jailed in subhuman conditions without proper legal procedures. They are deprived of light, exercise, family and companionship. The only education they receive in the prison is how to be a criminal. After some time in the prison, some become psychologically damaged, traumatized and sometimes deranged. At Preda, the children gain a new lease at life through the restorative, non-punitive approach it employs in treating children.
Prof. Däubler-Gmelin also watched and was moved by the children and youth leaders at Preda when they presented a drama depicting the lives of trafficked and abused children.
